Living Gospel Equality Now: Loving in the Heart of God: Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Sister Theresa Kane, RSM: A Vision for the Catholic Community in the 21st Century

"I want to identify what I listed as four qualities. There are many more; and I encourage you to think about qualities that will bring about this Church as community in the 21st century. "

"The ones that I listed were:A passion for social justice;A gospel mandate for solidarity with economically poor people;A discipleship of equals; andA zeal, and I say a passion, and a thirst, for peace and non-violence.""I think we also have a Gospel mandate for solidarity with the economically poor people. The essence of the Gospel is a challenge of justice; and it’s also the works of mercy. I mean, we know what Jesus did. He went around. He fed the poor people. He raised the dead. He comforted people. He was doing the works of mercy all the time. He did justice. He did social justice. "

,,, "We need to be extremely conscious to say, “Are we indeed a discipleship of equals?” We have to look at our habits and our customs. And many of our customs have been institutionalized into mindsets, structures and systems. So when I again refer to sexist language people will say, “Well, it’s really not a problem for me, because I know it doesn’t mean men. I know it means women as well as men,” you see. But it’s part of our customs. In a sense we’ve been propagandized to think that that’s all right. We even hear it very often on our television programs, where we use the male language, and we don’t do the inclusive language, we don’t use the female. So we won’t have a discipleship of equals if we don’t become conscious that we are women and men forming this community. I believe a discipleship of equals means the absence of chauvinism, machoism, imperialism, subjugation, inferiority and superiority. ..".